Blood Song

Brak…So he had a name. He wondered briefly if anyone would wear a mourning locket for Brak, if his widow or mother or brother would offer thanks for his life and the goodness and wisdom he had left behind. But as Brak was an assassin, a killer waiting in the woods to murder children, he doubted it. No one would weep for Brak… as no one would weep for these two. His fist tightened on the bow, bringing it up to draw a bead on the stocky man’s throat. He would kill this one and wound the other, an arrow in the leg or the stomach would do it, then he would make him talk, then he would kill him too. For Mikehl.

Something growled in the forest, something hidden, something deadly.

Vaelin whirled, drawing the bow - too late, knocked flat by a hard mass of muscle, his bow gone from his hand. He scrabbled for his knife, instinctively kicking out as he did so, hitting nothing. There were screams as he surged to his feet, screams of pain and terror, something wet lashed across his face, stinging his eyes. He staggered, tasting the iron sting of blood, wiping frantically at his eyes, blearily focusing on the now silent camp, seeing two yellow eyes gleaming in the firelight above a red stained muzzle. The eyes met his, blinked once and the wolf was gone.

Random thoughts tumbled through his mind. It tracked me…You’re beautiful… Followed me here to kill these men… Beautiful wolf… They killed Mikehl… No family resemblance…

STOP THAT!

He forced discipline on the torrent of thought, dragging air into his lungs, calming down enough to move closer to the camp. The stocky man lay on his back, hands reaching towards a throat that was no longer there, his face frozen in fear. The whiner had managed to run a few strides before being cut down. His head was twisted at an sharp angle to his shoulders. From the stench staining the air around him it was clear his fear had mastered him at the end. There was no sign of the wolf, just the whisper of undergrowth moving in the wind.

Reluctantly he turned to the sack still lying at the stocky man’s feet. What do I do for Mikehl?

“Mikehl’s dead,” Vaelin told Master Sollis, water dripping from his face. It had started to rain a few miles back and he was drenched as he laboured up the hill towards the gate, exhaustion and the shock the of the events in the forest combining to leave him numb and incapable of more than the most basic words. “Assassins in the forest.”

Sollis reached out to steady him as he swayed, his legs suddenly feeling too weak to keep him upright. “How many?”

“Three. That I saw. Dead too.” He handed Sollis the fletching he had cut from his arrow.

Sollis asked Master Hutril to watch the gate and led Vaelin inside. Instead of taking him to the boys’ room in the north tower he led him to his own quarters, a small room in the south wall bastion. He built up the fire and told Vaelin to strip off his wet clothes, giving him a blanket to warm himself while fire began to lick at the logs in the hearth.

“Now,” he said, handing Vaelin a mug of warmed milk. “Tell me what happened. Everything you can remember. Leave nothing out.”

So he told him of the wolf and the man he had killed and the whiner and the stocky man… and Mikehl.

“Where is it?”

“Master?”

“Mikehl’s… remains.”

“I buried it.” Vaelin suppressed a violent shudder and drank more milk, the warmth burning his insides. “Scraped the soil up with my knife. Couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.”

Master Sollis nodded and stared at the fletching in his hand, his pale eyes unreadable. Vaelin glanced around the room, finding it less bare than he expected. Several weapons were set on the wall: a pole axe, a long iron bladed spear, some kind of stone headed club plus several daggers and knives of different patterns. Several books stood on the shelves, the lack of dust indicating Master Sollis hadn’t placed them there for decoration. On the far wall there was some kind of tapestry fashioned from a goat skin stretched on a wooden frame, the hide adorned with a bizarre mix of stick figures and unfamiliar symbols.

“Lonak war banner,” Sollis said. Vaelin looked away, feeling like a spy. To his surprise Sollis went on. “Lonak boy children become part of a war band from an early age. Each band has its own banner and every member swears a blood oath to die defending it.”

Vaelin rubbed a bead of water from his nose. “What do the symbols mean, master?”